Coyote Creek Elementary 22-23
OUR CONTEXT
OUR LEARNERS
Literacy is a fundamental life skill. It is the ability to read, write, speak, and think in a way that allows us to communicate effectively and make sense of the world. Communication – a core competency embedded across all areas of learning in BC’s curriculum – is central to supporting our learners develop their literacy skills as they collaborate, problem solve, share ideas, exchange information, and express their individuality. Evidence of our learners many gifts, attributes, and competencies are highlighted below.
Our learners can make sense of what they read by visualizing, questioning, and inferring as strategies to deepen their understanding and communicate their thinking.
Our learners share their thinking by using different strategies. Our learners can participate in conversations and communicate their ideas confidently about topics they know and understand. Some strategies include story workshop, sharing thinking through creations and hands-on learning or building our reading powers to help us transform student thinking and practice.
In this sample, our students show their learning and understanding of Remy Lai’s graphic novel, "Pie in the Sky". By using Adrienne Gear’s Reading Powers. Students are guided through their reading and have the opportunity to share facts, wonderings, and inferences of the story in partners, small groups and whole class discussions. Our learners demonstrate that they can infer and make sense of the complex literature by sharing their thinking and others can build on different layers of thought to interpret the text. “Imagine... What is happening when…Why is the character… I think…”
Our learners can engage in inquiry and develop their ideas through hands-on learning experiences.
Across all grades, students communicate, and think critically about their learning. In this science example, students learn about how the shape of the land is changed by environmental factors. Two students are sculpting a model of a chosen landform to study and share what they know, what they learned, and where the landform can be found locally. During science, our learners develop their literacy skills by communicating their ideas through oral and written language, drawings, and models they have constructed.
“An island is land surrounded by water...”
This student is working on making two mountains and flat land in between the mountains to show and talk about a valley.
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Our learners can participate in conversations and communicate their ideas confidently about topics they know and understand. Some strategies include story workshop, sharing thinking through creations and hands-on learning or building our reading powers to help us transform student thinking and practice.
Our early learners are always eager to share and tell stories. In this sample below, two students create stories from loose parts through story workshop. The students are playing with expressive language and doing a story demonstration through the use of visuals. Each story is unique and students take turns listening and speaking. Our youngest learners enjoy connecting with others through story and so many great adventures are shared.
Literacy throughout our school can look differently for each learner. Within our school environment, each day consists of a plethora of literacy experiences that build and develop each child's reading ability.
Here are two students working together to explore math concepts, to share their learning and, through discussion, they develop meaning for the work they are engaging in. These are all necessary steps to build knowledge through critical thinking.
In this next example, a student is engaging in inquiry and seeking to demonstrate learning around an ancient structure. This student has carefully read through and analyzed text at an intermediate level to find information, evaluate and use this information to build their understanding.
OUR FOCUS
OUR FOCUS
Every day, our learners are presented with learning experiences to focus on thinking, reading, writing, and communicating in all curricular areas. Our goal is to help our students develop a strong literacy foundation that will support their participation in today’s world. fundamental to practice and demonstrate their literacy skills and capabilities.
Our students’ learning goals include:
- Developing reading fluency through phonemic and phonological awareness, word patterns, and word families.
- Making meaning of literature using developmentally appropriate reading, listening and viewing strategies.
- Deepen understanding of text through a variety of comprehension strategies before, during and after reading, listening or viewing.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to hear and identify sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children learn to read during the first two years of reading instruction. Where assessment results demonstrate limited phonemic awareness, our evidence consistently shows that with careful and intentional intervention, substantial gains are made, even with our most vulnerable learners.
Reading Fluency
At our school, we are looking to build students' reading fluency through promoting daily reading experiences. These reading experiences are the building blocks that our learners need to begin to make meaning and build understanding of the materials they read.
Reading Comprehension
Comprehension refers to the ability to understand written words. It is different from the ability to recognize words. Recognizing words on a page but not knowing what they mean does not fulfill the purpose or goal of reading, which is comprehension. Comprehension adds meaning to what is read. Reading comprehension occurs when words on a page are not just mere words, but thoughts and ideas. Comprehension makes reading enjoyable, fun, and informative.
Student Learning Experiences
We have a small group of learners in primary. These learners and classrooms have a variety of literacy instructional strategies that build upon the structure of decoding and phonemic awareness through small group instruction, decodable books and shared reading times. We also have two intermediate cohorts who are following the literacy learning of our students over time.
Student learning experiences during this school year included an increased focus on understanding phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, increased recognition of sight words, verbal reasoning and language structure. Small group instruction with an emphasis on foundational literacy skills including letter sounds, letter recognition and a broader understanding of written and visual text.
Our teachers are consistently building background knowledge and vocabulary in an effort to develop comprehension within the classroom.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Evidence of our students' learning demonstrates that our literacy focus is positively impacting all three cohorts of learners. When surveyed and asked to communicate their students' progress using the provincial assessment scale, teachers from all cohorts indicated that all students demonstrated growth in relation to our three literacy goals:
- Phonemic Awareness
- Reading Fluency
- Reading Comprehension
Evidence
In early primary, we looked at how our students were performing on the ELPATS (Early Literacy Phonemic Awareness Tool). Teachers have been engaging in conversations to enhance student learning experiences specific to phonemic awareness and decoding.
ELPATS Performance Indicators
These results show that we have a clear direction of how to present our literacy instruction to our early learners. We will continue to support students in isolating phonemes along with blending and segmenting. For students who are still developing in their ability to move through each module, we will need to provide them continued support until these skills are solidified.
Classroom and Self Assessment: Comprehension
Teachers used a selection of both classroom assessments and student self assessments for our intermediate cohort groups to monitor comprehension proficiency. Below are two examples of classroom assessments. The first is a teacher assessment to monitor student comprehension over time and the second is a student self-assessment discussing strengths and goals through a writing piece. The student self-assessment reflects a strong level of comprehension in relation to the core competency identifying independent strengths and goals.
Teacher Assessment
Student Self Assessment
FSA - Foundational Skills Assessment
Another piece of evidence we are monitoring over time with a view to increasing students' level of proficiency in literacy is the FSA results for our students in Gr. 4 and Gr. 7. The following two graphs reflect that, of students who wrote the FSA, the majority of our students are on track in their literacy development.
Moving Forward
At Coyote Creek, we are proud of the incredible progress our students have made in literacy this year.
Based on evidence of students' progress in relation to our learning goals, our next steps will include:
- Continuing to support the science of reading and actively use instructional strategies to decode letters and words.
- Going deeper into reading a variety of genres to help students learn text structures and language that students can confidently transfer to their own literacy skills.
- Exploring a variety of decodable books to help build students' understanding and growth in literacy
Students are showing growth over time when progress is monitored in our primary and intermediate cohorts. Specifically, we will be monitoring reading levels and teacher reflections in relation to our primary cohort. For our intermediate cohort, we will track their growth through teacher reflections, FSA scores and student engagement with Reaching Readers. We will also continue to conference with teachers who have been engaged in sharing instructional strategies that they have been using in their classrooms and sharing their learning to further develop outstanding literacy practices.
Surrey Schools
Formed in 1906, the Surrey School District currently has the largest student enrolment in British Columbia and is one of the few growing districts in the province. It is governed by a publicly elected board of seven trustees.
The district serves the cities of Surrey and White Rock and the rural area of Barnston Island.
